


In Sickness

by mrstater



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, F/M, Marriage, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catelyn remembered how young the Lady Lynesse had been, how fair, and how unhappy. One night, after several cups of wine, she had confessed to Catelyn that the north was no place for a Hightower of Oldtown.[ASOS]</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Sickness

The serving girl refilled Lynesse's wine goblet, not for the first time during the feast. As she brought the cup to her lips, she caught Catelyn Stark watching her intently. _In judgment,_ Lynesse thought, her own eyes narrowing at her hostess over the pewter rim. But whatever the Lady of Winterfell had been thinking about her guest, she masked it with her smile of perfect ladylike hospitality. The sort of smile which had been as much a part of Lynesse's education as swordplay was of a boy's.

How much better the latter would have suited the impoverished Lady of Bear Island.

Swallowing the draught of wine, Lynesse twitched her lips into what she hoped was a semblance of ladylike grace, though the expression felt strange upon her face, like an old gown that no longer fitted properly.

"The food and drink are to your liking, I hope, Lady Lynesse," said Catelyn.

"Very much, Lady Catelyn." Lynesse took another sip as if to lend veracity to her words. "The Arbor Gold is…"

She paused, a tight feeling in her chest which made her fear for a moment she might do something so unseemly as hiccough _._ Not that she could disgrace herself any further than Jorah had in Highgarden, when he'd belched at the dinner table, prompting Lady Olenna to remark that in _some_ parts of the world, a good loud belch expressed great compliments to the cook. Somehow Lynesse had thought the Queen of Thorns meant this to put him at ease, but her humorless husband, even more dour when he'd been in his cups, took it as a slight against his beloved North. 

"…not often in our goblets," Lynesse concluded.

_Goblets._ Could the crude wooden things in Bear Hall even be described as such? Averting her gaze from Lady Catelyn's politely pursed lips and pitying eyes, she turned the pewter cup round and round. Even this was not nearly so fine as the silver, jewel encrusted ones in the High Tower in Oldtown, but she didn't expect Oldtown anywhere but in Oldtown. Or perhaps Highgarden. Even this simple elegance would seem luxuriant on Bear Island. She didn't ask for _so_ very much…

She drank again, relishing the satin-smooth metal against her lips like a kiss. Her eyelids closed, heat licking at her lash lines.

"It isn't always in our own, either," Lady Catelyn's voice broke gently into her musings. "One of the many pleasant benefits of feasting guests in one's hall. Besides the company, of course. Lord Eddard and I shall be sorry to see you and Lord Jorah take your leave tomorrow. Though I'm sure you must look forward to being home again, after a fortnight away?"

The wine seemed to sour on Lynesse's tongue as she gave a bitter puff of a laugh. "You're sure, are you?"

Opening her eyes, Lady Catelyn appeared to be weaving, her features vague, though not so much so that Lynesse couldn't make out that her hostess was looking at her as though she'd just said something inappropriate. What _had_ she said? She tried to go back through her mind, but it felt like sloughing through syrup…sludge…the snow on Bear Island, knee-deep, deeper…

_Oh._

She'd implied she wasn't looking forward to going back, hadn't she? _Home_ , Catelyn called it.

Home to the Lord of Bear Island, though heaven only knew why. Not to its Lady.

Home to Lynesse meant cobbled streets lined with spacious stone mansions, markets with shops and cards and merchants selling all manner of pretty and tasty thing which she could lay down coin for from a bottomless purse whose strings were not held by a husband who uttered such phrases as _it costs dear_. Home was the rainbow of ships' sails gliding up and down the sparkling canals, guided by the light that never went out in the High Tower. However could she have imagined herself a damsel in distress there, in need of a knight in shabby armor to rescue her from it?

For a moment Lynesse thought she'd lost her balance in her seat as the blurred image of Catelyn swung suddenly closer toward her, but then she felt the smooth fingers wrap around her own hand. A lady's hand, a _proper_ lady's hand, like her sisters' and her poor dead mother's…

"Oh my dear girl," crooned Lady Catelyn, inclining her head toward Lynesse. 

Her beautiful face and burnished hair swam as tears filled Lynesse's eyes. She shut them, trying to stop herself doing anything so unseemly as weep in the great hall of Winterfell, at a feast given in her own honor, but it was too late. The tears spilled, rolling hot down her cheeks.

"Warm…" she mumbled. "So warm here…My lord says hot water flows through your castle walls…Our own do little to keep out the cold…sometimes the wind howls so that I fear every member of House Mormont will be blown north of the Wall."

"But there you stand," said Lady Catelyn, squeezing her hand.

"Yes…there I stand…Miserable and alone…"

It was such a shameful thing to say, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.

Lady Catelyn nodded, even smiled in understanding. "You are not the first Southron girl to marry a Northman and feel sick for her home."

Lynesse sniffled and, _sweet Seven_ , hiccoughed. She sat up in her chair, swaying as she did so, and pulled her hand from Lady Catelyn's to swipe the tears from her eyes. It wasn't the same, Lynesse wanted to tell her, but her tongue seemed unable to form the words. It wasn't simply a matter of North and South. If Jorah's hall were more like Lord Eddard's, it wouldn't be so difficult.

"You are sick for your old home, Lady Lynesse," she went on, "because Bear Island is not yet your new one."

"When did you stop being homesick for Riverrun?" asked Lynesse, in spite of herself. "What made Winterfell home?"

Smiling softly, Lady Catelyn looked down the hall, Lynesse following her gaze with her own until it came to rest on her husband and Lord Eddard, who were entertaining the little lordling and his bastard brother with tales of the battles they had fought together. Jorah had Robb on his knee, and Lynesse could tell from the familiar gestures that he was telling the lad how he'd followed Thoros of Myr through the breech at the Siege of Pyke, as he'd told his young cousins so many times before.

Lynesse looked away, taking up her goblet ones again. "I know what you would say, Lady Catelyn. I cannot birth babes in that place. How could I? Is Lord Leyton's daughter to play nursemaid?"

As she gestured, some of the precious Arbor Gold sloshed from her cup onto the floor. Gone, like coin fallen from a purse into the drain of a city street.

"Are his grandchildren to dress in plainspun and crawl about in the dirt like…like bear cubs?"

_Like Maege's brood._

She imagined golden-haired daughters swinging morningstars with Jorah in the training yard instead of singing lullabies in the nursery to porcelain dolls tucked into golden cradles beneath silken blankets trimmed with Myrrish lace.

And she imagined herself, heavy and sick with child, lacking in the most basic of creature comforts. Her stomach roiled now, in fact, and she leaned her head back in her chair, closing her eyes to stop the room bobbing like the world viewed from a ship.

"There is nothing for me there," she whimpered into her cup as she drained the last drops of her wine.

"Forgive me if I speak too plain, Lady Lynesse," said Lady Catelyn, "but I have observed your husband. , While he may have little in terms of material wealth to lavish upon you, when it comes to love I believe you may well be the richest woman in all the Seven Kingdoms."

Lynesse stared into the empty bottom of her goblet. Jorah uttered almost exactly those words when he'd drunkenly asked for her hand. How romantic they had sounded then, tumbling uninhibited from his lips--soft lips, surprisingly so, supple upon her own and sweet with wine--following as they had on the heels of the unlikely tournament victory, fueled by passion for her. She'd been drunk, too, as much on love as on wine…

Her stomach lurched, bile burning through her chest, bitter in her throat, and before she could clap a hand over her lips to stop it, she pitched forward in her chair and heaved. The legs of Lady Catelyn's chair screeched on the stone floor as she pushed back, and her skirts rustled as she caught them up from the stream of vomit, but to Lynesse's further humiliation, as she dabbed at her lips and chin with the edge of her own dagged sleeve, she saw that her hostess had not got her hem out of the line of fire.

"M-my lady," Lynesse stammered, "I'm so--"

"Do not think of it," Lady Catelyn said, dipping the corner of a napkin in a bowl of water and dabbing Lynesse's flushed brow. "A mother is accustomed to such from her children--and to much worse."

_Yet another reason not to have any,_ Lynesse thought. She made no further attempt at apology, not because Lady Catelyn had reassured her, but because she feared opening her mouth would let loose another stream of something other than speech. She slumped in her chair, the damp cloth pressed to her forehead, half-hearing the mistress of Winterfell bid a servant to see to the floor.

She must have summoned Jorah, too, because a moment later Lynesse felt his muscular arms around her, lifting her as effortlessly as he had the Stark children, and she felt the rumble of words in his chest as she tucked her head against it.

"Should I take her to Maester Luwin?"

"Nay, my lord," replied Lady Catelyn. "It is only too much rich food and wine."

Lynesse was too overcome with the effort of not leaving a trail of sick through the feast hall to lift her head and give Lady Catelyn a look of gratitude for her graceful lie, though the thought did flicker through her mind. Anything like thankfulness vanished, however, as she vomited into the chamber pot in their guest room and Jorah, holding her hair back out of the way and offering clumsy words of comfort.

"Mayhaps…it's a babe, at last."

"It's not a babe," Lynesse choked out. "I have simply drunk too much Arbor Gold."

"You cannot have drunk _that_ much," said Jorah with a little chuckle as she retched again.

Gasping, Lynesse sat up on her heels, her fingers clutching the rim of the chamber pot. "I'm _not_ with child. I'm _drunk_."

The only sounds in the bedchamber were the puffs of her breath and, faintly, her hair sliding through Jorah's roughened fingers as he let go, the scuff of his beard as he ran his palm over his jaw line.

"I'm pleased you at least enjoyed the feast," he said, voice low. "Even if it did not agree with you in the end."

"Yes," said Lynesse. "It's nice to have too much of something, for a change."


End file.
